The beauty in the detail

As you get older I think you begin to appreciate the smaller details of things. I once used to look at the big detailed elements of a work of art like a statue or a church to become absorbed in the whole. It’s easy to become mesmerised by the art work in such a historically artistic country like Italy (the same can be said for any country with a wealth of art from France to Turkey) but I found I never could recall the whole picture.

Now I find myself giving a quick look at the whole of an artwork so I can pick out some kind of detail that speaks to me, to be recalled in my basic memories. On the whole I feel more gratified by taking my own little piece of detail. Whether it be a brushstroke or shadow in a painted picture or a geometric pattern on a floor of a building or a single element in a complex tableau of a church.

I like the challenge of seeing something that other observers may miss by trying to soak it all in at once. This approach certainly creates beautiful photos of my own personal artistic experiences of art here in Sicily.

One crazy dream of mine would be to travel through the world and photograph the details of iconic places that have never been depicted, a kind of reinterpretation of the idea of tourism. I once heard of a photographer, whose name now escapes me, who literally stepped up close to the likes of the Eiffel Tower and took shots centimeters away which served to demystify the romanticism of such icons. I don’t think I’d be quite so sever but there are always new ways to look at the world.

Here are some of my photos of details from the local Palazzo Salleo here at Singara (Messina) which illustrate my point, small details of the fresco’s show intimate details of the natural world and a pantheist worship of nature. It is the smaller details in big dominating rooms that tell the most interesting stories and certainly said the most to me.

Then lastly there is a hidden stain glass window depicting St Michael the Archangel, I came across at a church at Longi (Messina) when I attended a baptism a few years ago, a testament that beauty can often surprise us.